Welcome to the World's First Great Big Vegetable Challenge! Six years ago we went on a vegetable journey of a lifetime. A 7 year year old boy named Freddie and his mother faced up to the challenge of turning him from a Vegetable-Phobic into a boy who will eat and even enjoy some of life's leafier pleasures. We ate through the alphabet of vegetables...and returned to tell the tale. Join our Great Big Veg Challenge!

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

A is for Artichoke

First thing this morning I checked my blog and experienced what must be very special to all fledgling blogger - a buzz from the fact that people had visited the site and added their thoughts. People from Canada, Singapore, and even far-flung Norfolk. Thank you.I went down to breakfast which is prepared with military precision by my husband at 7 am. He runs our house as if it were a kind of bootcamp for weaklings. We are yelled at to get dressed quickly, asked whether we have the right equipment for the day - sports kit, Oyster Card, coat, correct shoes etc. But then his bootcamp has a strange edge. Classical music is piped into the kitchen. All tastes in bread are catered for. And for me there are added privileges. Coffee and newspapers. I am very very lucky.I mentioned to everyone my small triumph in the world of blogging. Husband was impressed but worried about the implications of time-wasting in the morning if I was checking my blog rather than getting ready for his 7am- sharp breakfast. Daughter asked why her brother and not her had inspired a blog. ( Sibling rivalry is big in our house.) And Freddie? Well he looked up from his brown toast with honey ( always the same, every single breakfast) and said. "Twenty-eight visitors? You still have something like 6 billion to go then." He likes statistics. And he has an unerring knack of bringing me back down to earth with a bump.But I am undeterred. I've decided I need a strategy to make the GreatBVC work. As Fred is complete in his dislike of vegetables I will set about introducing the A to Z of Veg. First stop, the Artichoke. I don't know what to do with it but might as well start at the deep end.

5 comments:

I'm really enjoying reading your daily postings. But I have a feeling that you may not get quite as many people advising you on the virtues of the artichoke. I know very little about it... ;o) apart from the fact that it is very good for flower arranging!!!

Love the idea. And I love artichokes, so I have many suggestions for YOUR eating pleasure, but for your son, I suggest secrecy, cunning, and camouflage.

So on that note, steam the artichoke, peel off all the leaves and the choke, then chop it up into smallish pieces and mixing it with chopped chicken, mayonaise, celery, salt, etc. and putting it in a sandwich. He probably won't even know the artichoke is there!

Here's something you can do with artichokes (Make sure you convert them into UK recipe standards - I see that you live there.), but the only thing I should change here is to mince the artichoke very finely,and add the spinach a few weeks after he gets used to it. Hope this helps!